* * * * *

OUR PORTFOLIO.

Personal advertisements having reference to the matrimonial exigencies of divers widows, old maids, and bachelors, are not without their influence upon the sympathies of the age.  Particular attention has been recently directed toward an announcement made in a Cleveland paper to the effect that “Two widow ladies, strangers in Cleveland, wish to form the acquaintance of a limited number of gentlemen with a view to happy results.  Please address in confidence,—.”

One involuntarily regrets that a prospect thus bounded by an horizon of “happy results” should have been confined to a “limited number of gentlemen”.

There is nothing so calculated to impair the usefulness of what purports to be a purely benevolent enterprise, as its selfishness.  If a widow, or any number of widows, really possess the means of realizing “happy results” with a “limited number of gentlemen,” they should either remove the limitation themselves, or make known the secret to those who would be less sparing of the joys which it is capable of communicating.  A quack who peddles a valuable remedy upon which he may have stumbled, and yet refuses to disclose its ingredients for the benefit of the whole medical fraternity, violates the esprit du corps of the profession, and is by general consent deemed a fit person to be kicked out of it.  Therefore, if any widows or single ladies in Cleveland have knowledge of any “happy results” which they advertise to share with a limited number of gentlemen, we shall deem them unworthy of their sex, unless they explain the process by which these results are attained, for the benefit of those who are fast verging toward the autumnal stage of maidenhood.

* * * * *

It may well be doubted whether the thought ever occurred to ADAM that one day or other a hen would be charged with the care and custody of a brood of goslings.  The pastimes of Eden were perhaps not favorable to vaticinations in the line of Natural History, but in the progress of the world since those most primitive times, men have come to contemplate the spectacle of that familiar barn-yard fowl made wretched by the aquatic propensities of her supposed offspring, without a particle of astonishment.  The wicked and unfeeling even go so far as to seek amusement in her misery.  Her “ducklings” and other symptoms of maternal agony at beholding the feathered darlings tempting the dangers of a neighboring duck-pond, do not move their stony breasts.  On the contrary, they decidedly relish that sort of thing, and greet with positive hilarity the efforts of some sympathizing rooster to cheer her.  Fie, upon such natures!  If they must have an outlet for their ribaldry, let them take PUNCHINELLO’S advice and select such instances as that recently furnished in Sacramento, where a hen took charge of a nest of kittens, and resolutely maintained it against the parent cat.  Here the